Student debt

$130,000 in student debt serves as Pip’s motivating factor to find her father early in the novel. Stuck at a dead-end job and feeling financial frustration, Pip decides that she will find her father to ask him to pay off her debt in exchange for being absent from her life for so long. Pip approaches her mother about her father’s true identity, but Pip’s mom is not forthcoming. Pip decides, in part, to join Sunlight because she hopes she will be able to use the group’s resources to find her father.

Spyware

Spyware is a kind of software installed on computers which enables monitoring and theft of files, and is symbolic of Andreas’s paranoia and increasing psychotic break. Andreas, fearing that Tom is about to expose his secret, forces Pip to infect the Denver Independent’s computer system, and Tom’s...